0:01:06 – Speaker 2
Greetings and welcome to Embrace your Storm. My name is Jonathan Nadeau. Thank you for joining us. We’ve got an awesome episode for you today. We have Alex, and he’s submitted a feature film to the Tornado Film Festival called DALWA. And so, alex, thanks for coming on today. Yeah, thanks for having me, john, it’s my pleasure. So maybe, before we get into DALWA, if you could talk to the audience a little bit about, like you know, obviously the film medium is at least one of your creative outlets. What kind of brought you down that road wanting to like make films and stuff like that?
0:01:40 – Speaker 3
Yeah, great question. So it wasn’t really actually until about senior year of high school that I decided I wanted to make movies myself. But my interest in film goes back to my earliest days and perhaps somewhat interesting is I grew up on older cinema, so I wasn’t really seeing the new movies coming out. When I was younger I was watching Charlie Chaplin and Hitchcock.
0:02:10 – Speaker 2
Oh, you’re kidding yeah.
0:02:13 – Speaker 3
So my father exposed me to a lot of the classic movies very early on and so I was getting exposure to some of the best movies ever made right away and I got to see just how you know the mechanics of film, and especially with the silent film was really impactful for me because it really taught me how to tell stories visually, as opposed to through lots of dialogue and telling the audience stuff being able to convey stuff on a visual level. So the silent film had a big impact on my decision to actually start making my own movies.
0:02:58 – Speaker 2
When you would watch those kids, like with your dad or whatever, would he be telling you like, oh, this is a great film, like you know. Would he kind of like tell you stuff about the films or things like that, or would you just kind of watch them together and just enjoy the time watching those films?
0:03:11 – Speaker 3
Yeah, he would. He had a book, one thousand and one movies you must see before you die.
0:03:19 – Speaker 2
That’s a cool book.
0:03:21 – Speaker 3
I know he worked through all of the movies in there and so he would go rent out these movies and not incredibly sure what to expect or what they were, and he just invite me along to watch them. So you know, my favorite director is Ingmar Bergman, who’s Swedish director that made movies from 40s to the 80s pretty much, and so he had shown me some of his movies early on and, yeah, he just picked some of the classics out based off recommendations from books he had and invited me to watch them.
0:04:00 – Speaker 2
So how old were you Like? Did you grow up as a kid? Did your parents have a kind of a VHS camera recorder or anything? Did you try making some of your own silent films as a kid growing up and stuff like that?
0:04:13 – Speaker 3
I didn’t really. It was mostly just watching the movies that I was passionate about until senior year, when my counselor was like, okay, well, we got to put what you’re interested in majoring in the yearbook, so choose something. And I was just like, all right, I’ll go into film. And so I didn’t. I didn’t really make my first short film until freshman year of college.
0:04:37 – Speaker 2
No kidding.
0:04:38 – Speaker 3
But yeah, I had, I think, a proper perspective on the stories that I wanted to tell and how to tell them from all of the movies that I had been watching leading up to that point.
0:04:51 – Speaker 2
What was that first film that you did as a freshman in college? Do you still have it?
0:04:57 – Speaker 3
I have it, but nobody else should see it. Yeah, I mean I didn’t even. I hadn’t even really touched a camera before freshman year of college, like I didn’t shoot anything, even on my phone, like it really was.
that was my first exposure to using lighting cameras, editing software, and so, yeah, I was coming in really green and so my first work is is a little bit rough, but yeah, I was. I became very passionate about making it and so I would make more short films than than the other students just because I needed to catch up in that way, and I found that the best learning that I could get was from just going out there and make totally apps.
0:05:51 – Speaker 2
I agree with that 100%. Like after you made that first one to that did that kind of spark your fire. You’re kind of like all right, that was cool, I need to. I need to do more of this.
0:06:01 – Speaker 3
Yeah, definitely yeah, I just I knew that I wanted to really develop a creative style. That was really important for me was to find my identity as an actual Filmmaker and the styles that I liked, and so a lot of my short films through the first three years of college was me just experimenting with different things different cameras, different editing approaches, different forms of storytelling to really lock in on what I actually liked, what I wanted to incorporate into my style, when I knew I was gonna start Trying to distribute my stuff, get it into festivals, things like that.
0:06:43 – Speaker 2
That’s really cool. What were some of the shorts that you that you put together that you know that likes what were, like the story lines or stories behind them.
0:06:51 – Speaker 3
Yeah, so I guess my my first short that I was actually okay with showing people. It was about this sort of lonely guy. It was like a meta kind of movie about this lonely guy who’s trying to make a movie but can’t find in actors or his like off-putting personality Distances people and so he can’t find actors to be a part of it, and it was sort of this like meta.
Okay, I mean sort of deal and so that, yeah, that was my first big one. That’s what I had to submit to actually officially be accepted into the second year of the film program.
0:07:38 – Speaker 2
Okay, yeah, that’s cool. How many short films do you think you kind of put together, you know, like over the years, like before you got to, because you said doll was your first feature film, right, right, yeah, so how many, how many short films do you think you did before you try going to the feature film?
0:07:56 – Speaker 3
I think I probably did, maybe around eight seven, eight, that’s.
0:08:01 – Speaker 2
That’s quite a few.
0:08:03 – Speaker 3
Yeah, and and, like I said it, a lot of them were mostly just experiments, trying to figure out what I liked. So what I was making with the short films wasn’t necessarily stuff I intended on submitting to any festivals or anything like that. It was really just to To try out what different cameras I like to use, what different lighting setups I like to use, and things like that, and so they really were Experiments as opposed to work that I was actually trying to get out there.
0:08:34 – Speaker 2
Okay, that makes sense Because, like you said, you, you learn by learn by doing, so that that makes a lot of sense. You’re kind of just trying out different stuff for the different short films then Mm-hmm.
0:08:44 – Speaker 1
What did?
0:08:44 – Speaker 2
your. What did your dad think of? I’m assuming you must have showed him some of the short films. What did he think of them?
0:08:50 – Speaker 3
Yeah, I think he. He liked some of them and didn’t like others. What was?
0:08:58 – Speaker 2
it more of like the storyline, or more of like whatever you’re trying to do Mechanically with, with, with the film that he didn’t appreciate, or um yeah, I mean, I think he Low budget film really isn’t his. Okay, yeah, yeah.
0:09:16 – Speaker 3
Production values and his stuff, and so when you’re a college student with not much money or resources, you know stuff is gonna look low budget.
0:09:26 – Speaker 2
Totally yeah.
0:09:27 – Speaker 3
He also likes stuff that is sort of trying to explore deeper themes, and I think a lot of what I was making college was I was going through sort of a phase of trying to provoke people and and get get them to react to the screen as opposed to actually taking it seriously as an art form and exploring different themes, and so once I switched into that mode where I wanted to explore deeper things, that’s when he started viewing my work is actually something he would like to watch over and over again.
0:10:02 – Speaker 2
That’s cool. So is that what brings us to Dalwa? Are you exploring more things like that within this movie?
0:10:09 – Speaker 3
Yeah, yeah, definitely. I think Dalwa is is sort of an exploration of sort of an idea of universal identity, the experiences that can sort of bond everybody, because really these main characters they’re, they’re all facing obstacles and challenges in their lives that they’re sort of powerless to control and no matter what decisions they make, how hard they try to make it work, and all the right decisions they make, it’s just out of their control. And I think that’s what, what, what happens, and I think that that’s a very sort of intrinsic element of the human experience that we can all sort of bond with is. We’ve all had experiences like that, where we’re kind of a victim of circumstance, things are out of our control, and you know it results in disappointment and we sort of find solace in the experience of others to to reckon with with that.
0:11:15 – Speaker 2
So so if you want to go into I mean you already kind of started going to what the movie’s about, but do you want to maybe tell us, like, because you said there’s three women characters, right, Like you may want to give like some background about them and stuff?
0:11:27 – Speaker 3
Yeah, definitely so.
the the youngest one is an aspiring actress just out of college and she’s struggling to find work in in a tough market that doesn’t bring a lot of work and she she’s facing pressures from her dad who is encouraging her to do something a little more safe and reliable, predictable career path she’s passionate about, about acting, and is trying to pursue that. And then the second one is a single mother and she’s trying to work multiple jobs while taking care of her young son, who isn’t doing particularly well in school and is acting out in some cases and so just trying to balance the you know, the work and being able to support herself and her child. And that’s sort of her conflict. And then the third is a elderly woman who her two daughters are sort of distant and she wants to connect with them in the recent death of her husband and they’re just really not interested in having a relationship with her anymore and so she’s trying to connect with them and they’re they’re not going for it. So those are sort of three conflicts of each of those characters.
0:13:04 – Speaker 2
And you were kind of saying that that there’s almost three sort of storylines going on in the film with these three women characters, right?
0:13:12 – Speaker 3
Yeah, so for 90% of the movie these characters don’t know each other, and what we, what I consistently do throughout it is I have them cross, physically cross paths and scenes For Bersor, and so that’s basically how one scene leads to another, as we’ll follow this one and then she’ll end up in a place where the second one is, and then we’ll follow the second one from there to a place where the third one comes, and vice versa, and so constantly crossing paths with each other, which sort of leads the direction of where we take the next few scenes.
0:13:53 – Speaker 2
So now I think you said like is Dawa the name of? Like was it a planet? You said that’s kind of passing Earth, like I can’t. I forgive me if that’s wrong, but I thought yeah, 100% correct.
0:14:05 – Speaker 3
So there’s this underlying thing going on where you hear from news reports that a moon or a planet is passing by Earth and it’s called Dawa, and the characters will enter certain locations or scenes where, like, a TV will be playing, where they’re sort of hearing this and then that’s cool.
Yeah, and so it’s. We don’t show the planet a whole lot until the end. You’re sort of just meant to keep it in the back of your mind as something that’s happening While all of this is going on. But then sort of the climax is the three women end up all in the same spot together to watch the moon pass by Earth. And so that sort of how they all come together in the end and they actually do meet each other in that capacity.
0:15:05 – Speaker 2
That’s cool. So now with this film that I’m assuming you did kind of, you know a lot of people in your situation where, like 13 different hats or whatever. So like did you, you did you write this whole script and like, obviously, like directed and produced and all that like, did you have a lot, like any or a lot of outside help with it, or was all this kind of on you?
0:15:27 – Speaker 3
A lot of the outside help was in the form of the cast. We had to have fairly large cast for a low budget film of like 40 people in the cannon are 50. And so that that was the biggest outside help. I was director, writer, producer, cinematographer, so yes, so I played multiple hats behind the camera. I’d say the departments that I didn’t really do was mostly audio. That’s where I brought somebody else in.
0:16:03 – Speaker 2
Okay.
0:16:04 – Speaker 3
Orte, but most of the stuff involving the video editing, cinematography that, yeah, that was me.
0:16:11 – Speaker 2
Was it? Was there anything where? Because you know, if you had like, let’s say, you had like eight short films under your belt, was there anything that caught you off guard? Because you know I’m assuming a lot of people you know could be like, oh, I’ve done, you know, eight short films. What’s what’s a feature film like? I know? I know I got this. Was there anything? We are just like man, this is so much more X than I thought it was going to be. You know that, like this is so much different doing it on a short film, even though it’s the same. You know I’m doing the same thing here. Was there, was there anything that kind of caught you off guard with that?
0:16:42 – Speaker 3
Yeah, definitely. I think that with a short film, it’s easier to assess what resources you need and you can actually almost write a script tailored to what you know you have and can achieve. So you can write a script that you know just a couple of locations or is in one location, so you don’t have to be going from place to place setting up different shoots on something like that.
With this, with a feature script, it’s harder to contain it in that way, because you do need to expand the story in ways that is interesting and moves things in a in a further direction, and especially when you’re talking about a nonlinear storyline sort of that’s following three different characters well, they all have their own locations and things that they’re doing, and so it was harder for me to assess just how much I would actually need in terms of resources. But you know, I I just sort of jumped into it and it was actually really rewarding to walk into a situation where I found my back was against the wall, where the idea of the scene I had in my head wasn’t exactly practical once we actually got on set and we’re looking at the situation and and we couldn’t really do what I had initially envisioned, and it was actually really rewarding and, I think, even made some scenes better to. That’s cool In that position and forced me to change some things to make it work.
0:18:17 – Speaker 2
That’s cool, like. How many different like locations did you have to go to? Because I would imagine just from hearing you know even the three women having to kind of cross each other’s pass and everything that alone makes it sound like there’s quite a few locations just from that.
0:18:32 – Speaker 3
Yeah, yeah, definitely. I think we probably had to do 20 to 25.
0:18:37 – Speaker 2
Wow, yeah, did you do them all in the town where you live.
0:18:42 – Speaker 3
All in the general area. It came down to yeah, what locations we could get decent rates on.
0:18:51 – Speaker 2
Yeah, I was just going to ask so did you have to get like permits and stuff like that for all those locations?
0:18:58 – Speaker 3
Yes and no.
0:19:00 – Speaker 2
Okay.
0:19:02 – Speaker 3
Used some places, like my brother’s apartment.
0:19:05 – Speaker 2
Oh, there you go.
0:19:06 – Speaker 3
Okay, you know we took advantage of stuff like that.
0:19:09 – Speaker 2
Okay, okay, that’s cool.
0:19:10 – Speaker 3
Used my connections to get get a couple of the locations. A lot of the stuff at the school was just my high school and they gave me permission to film there.
0:19:21 – Speaker 2
That’s cool.
0:19:22 – Speaker 3
There were people that came through for us that really helped. That’s really cool in terms of locations, but there were others where we had to fork up some money for it.
0:19:31 – Speaker 2
Yeah, Now would you, after getting this feature film done do you prefer feature films over shore, like? Do you want to do another feature film? Like didn’t leave a bad taste in your mouth or anything?
0:19:45 – Speaker 3
Yeah, no, it definitely didn’t leave a bad taste in my mouth and it was extremely rewarding. I think I became better at every single position I played as a result of making a feature. So I became a better director and cinematographer and everything else. I think that features are more marketable. You know a short film.
0:20:06 – Speaker 2
Yeah, that makes sense, yeah.
0:20:07 – Speaker 3
Yeah, so far, and you know every every person in his cousin has made a short film. So it’s just such a high quantity of stuff that you’re competing against that it’s. I think it’s harder to market a short film in an actual or in see any actual returns than it is a feature, where you know more festivals probably are not getting as many local features and are more accepting to those and you could possibly find some sort of distribution in the form of DVDs and Blu-rays where you might see some actual tangible returns on the work.
0:20:52 – Speaker 2
Yeah, I like that. Again, I’m kind of going back to what you said earlier, where you said you learn more by kind of doing and stuff. And I, what Ed Sheeran, this musician he said this thing one time during the interview was like you know what that makes a lot of sense. He was like I just write song after song after song. He’s like you have to write a thousand crappy songs to get to the good stuff. And he’s like, so you know, I would just keep writing songs and songs, and songs.
And you know, as you’re doing that, as you’re writing songs, you’re just getting better, you know, and not saying that people are, you know, on the films they’re going to put out a crap, but the point is like you just need to keep doing it and like, as you, as you, you know, keep refining your skills from the next film to the next film, before you know it, you’re like, wow, you know, this film is actually pretty good. Or when I, you know, like like I wouldn’t feel embarrassed to show this one to someone, you know, like I don’t know, I, I like that. That. You, you, your, your approach has just kind of taken action.
0:21:51 – Speaker 3
Yeah, and I think that’s that’s how it has to be. I actually just shot in another experimental feature, way more experimental than than D’Aulwa, but it was sort of like my, my work. I my work full time as a producer at a TV station here.
0:22:10 – Speaker 2
That’s cool.
0:22:11 – Speaker 3
Yeah, and they basically came to me and were like you need to take some paid time off or you’re going to resign it, but I I don’t know what to do with time off, so I decided to just make another movie. And so so I gathered a couple people together and we made sort of an experimental feature. That’s a silent movie mixed with mumblecore, if you’re familiar with with that phrase.
0:22:39 – Speaker 2
No, I’m not actually.
0:22:41 – Speaker 3
Yeah, so mumblecore was sort of this movement of independent film that came about in the early 2000s.
0:22:50 – Speaker 2
That was just like very much what it sounds like Like there’s no like actual dialogue, but they’re just kind of like kind of doing stuff like that Well, actually a big part of mumblecore is lots of dialogue.
0:23:04 – Speaker 3
Oh okay, it was a result of people who didn’t have a lot of money, who did not have a lot of connections, but just had a passion for telling stories and had a camera and went out and did it. And so it’s like this very DIY sort of approach to film where you it’s a lot of improvised dialogue it’s interesting, not a lot of story. I would encourage people to to look up that, that movement, because there’s actually quite some good movies in that. That’s pretty cool. But so it was sort of a combination of mumblecore with silent film and just trying different things, and it came out interesting, if nothing else. You know, I don’t know if it’s everybody’s cup of tea, but it certainly is certainly a rewarding experiment to do.
0:23:55 – Speaker 2
That’s really cool. That’s pretty cool. So, alex, we’re kind of round the third base here. Is there anything you want to tell the audience? Anything else, like about Dahl? While you wanted to go over that, maybe I didn’t get a chance to cover.
0:24:08 – Speaker 3
Yeah, definitely. I think that you know, I wouldn’t have been able to do it without an incredible cast and crew. We had shot through COVID, which was a huge obstacle.
Oh, wow, yeah, so it was that there were I don’t need to rehash everything going on from 2018 to 2022, but we make a movie in between. All of it and the cast was just and crew was just committed to getting the idea done and so it definitely wasn’t a one person effort and yeah, so that’s what I would say about that movie is it really boils down to just an incredible team that committed to it. But I would also say just generally to other people that are thinking about making a feature is I don’t think you actually need a lot of money or resources to explore deeper themes and to me, cinema really is an art form on par with with the other art forms out there, like literature and classical music and painting, and like it has the potential to explore elements of the human condition in as complex a way as those art forms and need a lot of money to do it.
0:25:23 – Speaker 2
Yeah, yeah, I agree with that. Honestly, I was kind of saying this on another interview where people are more, I want to say, more forgiving about like the quality, because you know, quality is kind of in the eye, that beholder, but it’s it’s more of like ease of access to films, like if you can make your film easily or readily available, people are going to watch it. I think I think that’s that’s the main hurdle for people to get over. You know, like I mean I, what we were talking about on the other interview is this person uploaded their their film the YouTube and it just took off. They got over it got over 2 million views, like it started going viral and I was like, see, that’s kind of my point like out, because we’re sort of talking about distribution at that point and I was like, honestly, the distribution company is the internet.
Like you don’t need to get in the hands of some guy who says, oh, I got contacts at NBC or Netflix or whatever. Like you just need to find a place on the internet where you can easily, you know can be, can be seen and in those long as you got like a good story or whatever, people are more and more forgiving of like kind of quality, in the sense of like you don’t need to have a $500 million budget in order for someone to want to watch your film, you know. And so I think if, like I said, ease of access is kind of the key to success in my opinion and and obviously a good story, but in my opinion I just don’t think people are a lot of people don’t hang on to, you know. Oh well, again, it’s not a $500 million budget. I don’t want to see it. I think there’s a lot less people that are like that. Now, you know.
0:27:09 – Speaker 3
Yeah, yeah, I think you’re right on, especially now where you’re not seeing a lot of originality in $500 million movies. You’re kind of exactly thing. It’s like there are actually new ideas at a more low budget, indie level that people should seek out, because otherwise you’ll miss out on a lot of the original and very smart and good movies that need that support.
0:27:36 – Speaker 2
A $500 million movie doesn’t need your support as much as a $5,000 movie does, so yeah, Well, Alex, I appreciate your time and thank you so much for your submission to the festival. Without you know people doing work like you, There’d be no reason for the tornado film festival. So I appreciate your work and your effort into everything that you do.
0:27:59 – Speaker 3
Yeah, definitely. I appreciate the opportunity to talk with you and, of course, your festival is obviously doing good things, given the right people platform.
0:28:09 – Speaker 2
Absolutely. That’s what we’re here for. So, everyone, thank you for listening, thank you for downloading and we will catch you next episode. And don’t forget to embrace your storm, see ya.
0:28:45 – Speaker 1
Thanks for watching.
